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TNA is looking for feedback on latest development of the Discovery catalogue

TNA has sent the following notice about the Discover Catatologue to the Society of Genealogists

We have been working hard on Discovery for many months, adding over 10 million record descriptions previously stored in a variety of different sources within the National Register of Archives (NRA), Access to Archives (A2A) and the Manorial Documents Register (MDR) so that they are all now searchable within a single online catalogue. See the Finding Archives for information: http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/archives-sector/finding-archives.htm .

Some things to note:

In order to add this new functionality, we have made some changes to how searching works; you will find that the search engine behaves differently and it may take a bit of time to get used to it. But you should be able to find what you would have found before (and of course lots more!). If you experience difficulties using the new search please let me know.

Use the 2 tick boxes under the main search box to quickly narrow your search only to records held by The National Archives and / or only records available for download.

Advanced search options have been significantly updated. For example, you can search for a specified date or a date range in the formats yyyy, mmyyyy or ddmmyyyy. ‘Search within’ has been replaced by ‘Find any reference’ which enables you to search within up to 3 references (not just National Archives’ ones). You can limit your search to only closed or retained records (currently you search for both). ‘Exclude title’ enables you to search for a specified term in all catalogue fields other than the document’s title (for example it’s longer ‘description’).

You can also use advanced search to search only for records held by The National Archives, only for records held by (all) repositories other than The National Archives, or only for records held by any other (named) repository.

The latest version has a new home screen and now includes a separate archive/repository search (ARCHON).

There is also a new image viewer which forms part of the details page where there are images to be displayed (rather than just downloaded) – the images are still obscured for external users and subscribers but onsite you will be able to view the images.
We have also made further changes to the export based on your feedback.

This is beta and some features may be missing or not work fully. However, there should be enough features and functionality for you to experience the new service.